COOKING UP PASSION THE WOMAN BEHIND LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE VIEWS THE KITCHEN AS THE CENTER OF SEDUCTION FOR HER STIRRING TALE OF LOVE ON THE SLY.

Lovingly created feasts fuel Like Water for Chocolate, a film so sensuous it almost steams.

Young Tita's recipe for quail in rose petal sauce turns a would-be lover into a man of many appetites. Denied the satisfaction of being in each other's arms, Tita and Pedro communicate through the dinners she serves him.

The screenwriter for this film, as well as the author of the novel it is based on, is Laura Esquivel, a wife and mother from Mexico City. The able direction is provided by Alfonso Arrau, her husband.

Now playing at three local theaters, it combines the joys of cooking with the passions of forbidden romance. It also comes as close to a cinematic expression of magical realism as any film since Erendira. Literally, desire turns to flames when Tita and Pedro hold each other.

The idea for Like Water for Chocolate, a best-selling novel in Mexico in 1990, came to Esquivel while she was cooking the recipes of her mother and grandmother. "The smells took me back to their cooking and the wonderful chats we had," she says, partly in Spanish and partly in English. (Translator Stephen Lytle helps with the rough spots.)

"The transfer is a natural occurrence. It's what happens to families. The same way one tells a recipe, one tells a family history. Each one of us has our past locked inside."

Esquivel used an episode from her own family to write her book. She had a great-aunt named Tita, who was forbidden to wed. Tita never did anything but care for her own mother. Soon after her mother died, so did Tita.

There's a fictional twist in the book and the movie Esquivel created. Tita, the youngest and liveliest of three sisters in 1910, falls in love with the dashing young Pedro. But because tradition makes Tita the lifelong caretaker of her mother, she cannot get married.

Pedro tries to numb his own pain of unrequited love by taking Tita's sister as his wife, knowing that at least he'll get to live in the same house as his beloved. The tears that Tita cries as she is making their wedding cake have a remarkable effect on the revelers -- each one weeps and grieves for the love of his or her life.

Through her masterful recipes, Tita reaches Pedro all the same. Their passion grows via her cream fritters, ox-tail soup and turkey mole with almonds and sesame seeds.

In the novel, Esquivel ingeniously interweaves recipes with her tasty plot. All the recipes are real and commonly used in Esquivel's family. Her personal favorites are Christmas rolls, mole sauce, and chilies in walnut sauce. To hear her talk about food is to realize the writer's elemental connection to it. Like Tita, she uses it for more than simple nutritional sustenance to bind people together.

How a meal is presented matters, Esquivel says: "Progress makes us lose the feeling of a ceremony that cooking should have. It has significantly shifted our values so that now it seems to us that only activities with an economic reward are worth pursuing.

"In this century, everything that took place in the kitchen was devalued. So were women. We all thought important social changes would happen outside the home. One of the biggest changes was that women were incorporated into the work force. On the one hand, it was very positive. We as women have honor and position and rights. Men and women thought to make a better world and create better human beings.

"Now we've reached the end of the century and the new man has not appeared. Nor will he as long as society is in disequilibrium."

Esquivel decries "factories that pollute for economic gain and wars created for monetary purposes. The only way we'll know where we're going is to look at the past and to remember who we were through ceremonies and rituals."

Food and the way we treat it is part of that re-defining process, according to the writer. "Cooking is one of the strongest ceremonies for life," she says. "When recipes are put together, the kitchen is a chemical laboratory involving air, fire, water and the earth.

"This is what gives value to humans and elevates their spiritual qualities." She then adds: "If you take a frozen box and stick it in the microwave, you become connected to the factory. We've forgotten who we are."

The film's title refers to a colloquial phrase used by the Spanish that means an extremity of feeling. It refers to a boiling point in terms of anger, passion and sexuality.

Considering the popularity of the book, it's a concept with universal currency. Like Water for Chocolate has been translated into 17 languages. Earlier this year, Esquivel completed a grueling promotional trip to 28 countries, including Belgium, Norway and Portugal.

Publishers in each country tampered with the title a little bit, she says. It's an understatement: "In Germany it is Foaming Like Hot Chocolate. In France it's Bitter Chocolate because in France they cook a lot with chocolate. In Holland it's Red Roses in Tortillas, and in Denmark and Norway it's Hearts in Chile."

The sensuality and earthiness of the Mexican character as revealed in Like Water for Chocolate is "a part of our everyday life."

"I wanted to emphasize it because it pains me that we've lost contact with the kitchen and that our past is leaving our hands. I want also to emphasize the strong relationship between sensuality and love through food."

Esquivel considers cooking an act of love. "In the kitchen, you make one thing from various elements. The final product has my love embedded in it. This will be felt by the people who eat my food."

In her view, the traditional sexual roles are reversed in cooking. "Women are the active ones, and men are passive. Women penetrate men's bodies through their food, in which they have put their very essence. Looked at in this way, the kitchen won't be viewed as a prison but as a constant source of wisdom and pleasure."

Asked to describe her own kitchen, Esquivel says, "It's wonderful. It has tile floor and raw wood cabinets. There are lots of hanging pots and pans, clay pots with herbs and baskets with plants. A window looks out on an interior garden."

She sees nothing retrogressive about this love of kitchens and the necessary work done there. On the contrary, she sees the kitchen as the place where everything solid and worth passing on to the next generation begins.

"The culinary tradition in my family is very strong," says Esquivel, whose black curly hair is peppered with gray. "My mother, a very wise woman, spent the better part of her life in a kitchen. It's a very strong part of her identity. I grew up there next to the fire."

In the 1960s, Esquivel came to think of time spent in the kitchen as a waste. "Everything I thought was worth fighting and living for was outside the kitchen. For a long time I did not go back."

Her attitude changed after she married and had a daughter. "What I wanted to make were the recipes of my past. The kitchen became a revelation. I realized the importance it had for me and my family. Now, next to the fire, I tell my daughter the same stories that my mother told me."

Esquivel's only child is 16. "She only cooks what she likes to eat," says her mother. "She loves McDonald's. Sometimes I take her, but only when I put on sunglasses in the hope that no one recognizes me."

Does she eat the food at McDonald's? "Yes," says Esquivel. "It's OK every now and then. What's terrifying is that people eat it every day. When people drive through in cars for their food, they're not aware of what they're eating. It causes an enormous spiritual and nutritional loss."